Photo: Mona Ødegård Foreword The work of the National Preventive Mechanism has continued with unabated energy in 2016. During the year, visits have been made to 11 places where people are deprived of their liberty – prisons, mental health care institutions, child welfare institutions and a police custody facility. This year was the first time visits were made to child welfare institutions and mental health care institutions for children and young people. During our very first visit under the prevention mandate to Tromsø Prison in 2014 – which houses both female and male inmates – we saw that the prison conditions for women were not equal to those for men. It has gradually become evident that this is the general pattern in Norwegian prisons. In 2016, the findings from visits to prisons where women serve sentences were summarised and analysed in a separate thematic report. It is based on experience from